Ideasmyth is honored to be administrating classes at The Writers Room

Ideasmyth is honored to be administrating classes at The Writers Room. The Writers Room is New York City’s first shared work space for emerging and established writers of all genres. Founded in 1978 “by writers for writers,” this professional workspace is an atmosphere of mutual support where creativity flourishes. The Writers Room provides over 200 writers with a quiet and affordable place in which to work.

In addition to workspace, the Room offers a reference and research library for the use of its members; seminars and workshops on subjects of interest to writers; readings of members’ works; and community for people working in a solitary profession.

In 2012, members published thirty fiction and non-fiction books along with many magazine articles, plays, and screenplays. Members have written more than 1,000 books since the doors of The Writers Room opened. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

To make sure that any writer at any stage of his or her vocation can afford its service, The Writers Room subsidizes all memberships with grants and gifts. Click below and make a tax-deductible donation to The Writers Room today! Your gift keeps writers living and working in New York City. Say Yes to writers thriving in New York!

Still not sure you should donate to this wonderful writing space? Hear from one of its members why it is worth every cent:

Dear Friends, Family, and Fellow Writers:

It is hard to solicit sympathy, let alone financial support, for writers. We are the lucky ones. We don’t have bosses, we make our own hours, we can work with our shoes off. At dinner parties, we are good to sit next to. We are the drunkest and our tales of woe are the funniest—the time we gave a reading and the only people in the audience were a felon and the cop who arrested him, the time a bookstore owner accused us of shoplifting our own book, the time we accidentally insulted Oprah and our career was over. Ha ha ha, we are lucky and funny court jesters, and you are glad to go home at the end of the party, knowing you have a good job and health insurance.

The year my first book became a hit and I was named Best Debut Novelist of the Year by New York Magazine, I babysat every Saturday night. Madonna had optioned my novel and hired me to write the screenplay, and I often returned home to my $250 a month apartment on MacDougal Street that stank of shawarma, to find messages on my answering machine from ConEd and the phone company turning off my service and from Madonna asking me to call her back to discuss the script and to talk about this movie or that. Ups and downs, heaven and hell. And through it all there was The Writers Room. I went to The Writers Room after I left my computer in a cab with an entire novel on it. I went to The Writers Room after I’d appeared on a big morning television show where I was interviewed lying on top of a big bed, not realizing the giant holes in the bottoms of my boots were clearly visible. I went to The Writers Room when my second son was born and I had a deadline, going home every two hours to nurse.I joined The Writers Room in 1996 when a beautiful girl wearing a short skirt and riding a bicycle stopped me on the street. It was Donna Brodie, my friend from college, the most glamorous girl I knew. “I’m the Executive Director of the Writers Room. You should join,” she said. I consider that one of the most fortuitous moments of my life, not just because I joined the Room but because it re-started our friendship. Read more...

Recently Donna organized a superb reading at The Writers Room, an elegant event with sparkling wine and incredibly fine writing. The turnout was huge, the excitement in the room palpable. The room was filled with notable published writers and aspiring ones. But I couldn’t help but notice the writer clapping the loudest from her seat in the front row. It was Sapphire, the beloved author of Push. She sat beside my favorite novelist and biographer, David Evanier, who had just had a conversation in The Writers Room kitchen with Charles Graeber, the New York Times best-selling author of The Good Nurse. Looking around I saw love and joy, creative expression, and vitality, masking, for this night, the desperation, the tears, the pain and the holes in the shoes that is the writer’s reality.

A few dollars go a long way here. Writers pay only $135 a month when the true cost of membership is closer to $300 a month. That is what The Writers Room would have to charge if it did not subsidize all membership fees so that almost anyone can afford to join. As incredible as Donna has been in re-negotiating our lease—a story so amazing New York has never seen its like—writing grants, managing the finances, and making the Room beautiful, warm, cozy and fun (ours, thanks to Donna, is the only writers’ colony with a dance floor), we are facing financial difficulty. Hundreds of writers depend on it to work week in and week out for years upon years. It is our home. Please make a tax-deductible donation today, whether you are a friend or relative of a writer, someone who loves to read, a past, or a current Writers Room member. And if you, yourself, are considering trying your hand at the book or poem or play or screenplay you’ve always wanted to write, I’d be more than happy to meet you in the Kitchen to talk about it with you.